The National Prayer Breakfast was canceled this year for the first time in nearly 20 years following a dispute over a social media post by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) supporting the LGBT community.
The event’s preparatory committee said in a statement on Thursday that to prevent further disputes and misunderstandings between members, the annual meeting, originally set for yesterday, would not be held.
The prayer meeting, which has been held since 2001, is organized by Christian organizations of several denominations.
Themed “Love without borders,” this year’s event was supposed to take place at the Miracle Top Church’s MeHAS Complex Hall in New Taipei City’s Sindian District (新店).
However, on Wednesday, the committee sent a letter to the Presidential Office, asking that an envoy be sent to attend the event on behalf of the president, as committee members do not support Tsai’s stance on LGBT issues and were not happy about a remark she had made about the gay pride parade.
The dispute arose after Tsai posted a message on Facebook on Sunday inviting the public to celebrate the 18th annual LGBT Pride Parade.
Following the group’s letter, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan issued a separate statement on Thursday morning, saying that holding a national prayer breakfast without the head of state in attendance runs counter to its purpose.
In the past, Taiwan’s president has always spoken at the annual event, said the organization, which supported Tsai’s participation at this year’s event, despite the reaction to her Facebook post.
It also said it had withdrawn from its role in the preparatory committee.
On Thursday afternoon, Presidential Office spokesman Xavier Chang (張惇涵) said that Tsai “respectfully declined” to attend the breakfast meeting, adding that she does not want people to quarrel over the matter after a majority of committee members asked the president not to attend.
Following Chang’s remarks, the committee issued a statement canceling the event.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching